The Searchers Among Us

If the number of people rejecting Christianity is on the rise, are we doing something wrong? What are they seeking, and how can we help them find it?

---

Cameron Lawrence
Illustration by Kaleigh Warwick and Jeff Gregory

It had been more than two years since Matt left the country, and now he was coming home. Before, we shared responsibility for leading a small group, which had turned into a close friendship. On nights and weekends, we often spent time together with our wives, enjoying the perks of city life, inevitably talking about faith and the ways we sensed God was engaging with our lives. But in his homecoming, things were different. Over the course of those two years of humanitarian work on another continent, Matt had decided that he could no longer be a Christian.

We exchanged letters while he was away, and early on I detected a subtle shift in my friend’s thinking. Eventually, he told me that he had some doubts. Questions had given way to more questions, and soon came the day when he could no longer claim in good conscience that he believed in Jesus or the credibility of Scripture—or that there was only one path to salvation, if such a thing exists. I had questions of my own. Most pressing was, How could a lifetime of belief crumble in such a short period? And what about those experiences in his life that had once confirmed for him the reality of Christ?

Declining Influence

There are people like Matt on your street, in the offices on your hall, and sharing your pew on Sunday mornings. They are your neighbors, long-time friends, and family members. Some were once professing believers, and others never were. Some haven’t yet left it all behind, but they’re thinking about it. They wonder, What would happen if I decided to let go of faith?
Every year more people are deciding to do exactly that. In 2012, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published what many thought was a wake-up call for Christian leaders. Despite efforts in recent decades to bring God into the public square through political activism and evangelism initiatives, Christianity was slipping in the battle for American hearts.

The study showed an increasing number of men and women in the United States no longer claimed any religious affiliation, and the percentage of professing atheists was on the rise. One in five American adults (a leap from 15 to 20 percent over the previous five years, and an increase from 8 percent two decades before) didn’t concern themselves with religion, including a third of all adults under the age of 30. If the charts are correct, we can expect the trend to grow steadily.
And by all accounts, both researched and anecdotal, it is.
Most troubling, perhaps, was a seemingly related uptick in the number of Christians who were walking away from the church altogether, particularly from among the younger generation. According to research from the Barna Group, 59 percent of Christians completely disengaged from church life or Christianity after the age of 15, either for an extended period or permanently. Add to this the potential number of children who will be born to non-religious parents—a generation who will have no continuous, structured spiritual formation—and we see a different picture of our society’s future emerging.
Within church culture, we have tended to refer to such people as “the lost”—those who don’t believe in Jesus Christ, or who aren’t certain they can. But this is a term that doesn’t resonate with their experience. Though we mean well, they find the label condescending, prideful, and judgmental. The hardest part? They may have a point.

The Language of Lost

“Lost,” we could argue, is a deeply biblical term. It corresponds to the New Testament imperative that one must decide whether he will follow Jesus Christ, and those who don’t make that choice forsake the one path to salvation (John 14:6). Yet as a label, the word can also be deeply problematic.

Far from seeing “the lost” as being of secondary importance, God sees that which needs to be found as possessing tremendous worth.

In the 15th chapter of Luke’s gospel, we find Jesus in conversation with the righteous of His day. The writer says that “all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him. Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them’” (Luke 15:1-2). But Jesus, as was often the case, didn’t
respond directly. Instead, He answered in three parables: He spoke of a shepherd who leaves behind 99 of his flock to go after a single lost sheep; a woman who, though she still possesses nine silver coins, turns her house upside down looking for the one that was lost; and lastly, a father who ran to embrace his long-lost child—the son who had squandered his inheritance.
If we can extract a lesson about God’s heart from these parables, it’s this: Far from seeing “the lost” as being of secondary importance, God sees that which needs to be found as possessing tremendous worth—so much so that He’s willing to leave behind everything to go after it. In this way, the people we might consider lost in a biblical sense take on primary importance. And His love for them is no less than it is for those who have already been found.
On paper, all of this looks good to us. In our discussions about evangelism and why we should go about proclaiming the good news, we affirm “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16). We emphasize that love should motivate us to reach our neighbors, friends, even complete strangers, with the message of the gospel so that they won’t spend this life or the next separated from the divine. And yet, there exists a subtle and pervasive mindset among some Christians that undermines these very beliefs.

While we would never outwardly claim to be above the non-believer, our conversations about non-Christian friends often betray the inner workings of our hearts. Sometimes in moments of unperceived pride, we can see ourselves as superior because of our ability to believe what others cannot. Secretly, in our heart, we make a value judgment, even if unconsciously. These judgments allow an “us versus them” mindset to persist: we are
the in-crowd, and they are not; we are the spiritual haves, and they have not; we are the more, and somehow they are less than.

It doesn’t take much Bible reading to discover this isn’t a Christian attitude. Examining the Gospels, we see it’s contrary to the humility exemplified by Christ, who abased Himself as a servant. And using an example we can perhaps relate to more readily, it’s an inversion of the lowliness the apostle Paul modeled in declaring himself the chief of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15 NKJV).
We would do well to remember that Jesus told these parables in response to criticism from the “in-crowd”—the righteous of the day (Luke 15:1)—over His decision not to allow distance between Himself and the outsider. He ate and drank with them (7:34; 15:2), an action that demonstrated humility and acceptance of His dining partners. After all, to eat with someone is to stand on level ground and say, “I identify with you” and “I desire friendship.”
Without careful consideration of the words we speak, uncritical usage can turn certain labels, like “lost,” into terms of reduction, revealing that we’ve neglected to appreciate the complexity of the human person and his spiritual journey through this world. We should take care to check ourselves, making sure we aren’t claiming to know that which we cannot know. If we are too quick in evaluating whether or not a person is “saved,” we could miss the fact that God is already engaged in his life, blessing and shaping his existence. A failure to affirm the meaningful work already going on would be not only shortsighted but also an insult to the non-Christian’s most profound and formational questions and experiences.
The language we use is powerful in shaping our perception of the world around us, including our non-believing neighbors. Certainly, a case can be made for the word “lost” on theological grounds. But in today’s culture, it is becoming counterproductive, creating distance between us and the people who might otherwise find what they’re looking for in the Christian faith. If we need a term, there’s one that can lead our thoughts to better ground—one that resonates more deeply with the concerns and experiences of those who don’t share our beliefs.

The Searcher

When Matt returned to the states, we had a lot to talk about. But it would take time to understand where he was coming from. Over the course of several conversations in the ensuing months, with a lot of life together in between, I listened, asking questions of my own. And little by little, I came to understand and appreciate where my friend was coming from.
Most helpful was the way Matt chose to describe himself: He didn’t see himself as lost, but rather he was intentionally and actively seeking. He took his questions seriously and sought out compelling answers, on his terms and with his own timing. Matt was a searcher. As I’ve thought on that term—searcher—I’ve come to appreciate it as a useful name but with an elusive definition. The biggest challenge is that what a searcher might be varies as often as we encounter someone who is searching.
Although contemporary evangelism practices have emphasized a demographical approach, relying upon generalized conclusions of who non-Christians are and what they need, the method has limited usefulness in today’s culture. The root of the problem is anthropological: from a Christian perspective, there’s no such thing as general people, but only unique, free, unrepeatable beings made in God’s image. While studying overarching trends and common traits can be helpful, it will ultimately fail to reveal the specificity of a searcher’s heart—not accounting for the unique history and concerns that continue to shape it.

If we want to reach out to people who are looking for truth, we need first to engage them as fellow humans—not as possible converts, but as potential friends.

Mere Humanity

Sometimes I think that we Jesus-followers spend so much time focusing on our brothers and sisters in Christ that we forget about the brotherhood of humankind to which we also belong. But if we want to reach out to people who are looking for truth, we need first to engage them as fellow humans—not as possible converts, but as potential friends. They’re looking for people to share life in authentic ways, where open and honest dialogue flow freely without judgment or condescension.

We should remember that Christianity is incarnational: it exists and speaks as
an embodied faith in the lives of men and women, boys and girls. This means that the world around us gains its understanding of our faith and how true it is, not from books or pamphlets but by our lives. People come to evaluate whether or not our beliefs are relevant by the things they observe. And what are they hoping to find? For most people in a phase of spiritual searching, the particulars vary from person to person. But if it’s possible to drill down to one universal desire, it’s to live an authentically human existence. If somebody one day believes, it will be as a whole person who lives and moves in the real world, and whose faith isn’t applicable only to church life.

Isn’t this also what we want? We’re not so different from them. In the end, we, too, are searching. Though we may have already been found in Christ, there is always further we can and must go into the mystery of life with God. Now we see through a glass darkly. Someday, we will see clearly. Until then, we should continue journeying onward through our joys and sorrows, doubts and revelations, humbly linking arms with our brothers and sisters as we go.
All of them.